Is the United States Militarily Weak?
The United States suffers no shortage of defense Jeremiahs. In their circle, the Munich analogy remains ever fresh, the danger of appeasement and isolationism ever present. Thus, for example, retired Lt. General William E. Odom, though conceding that today the Russian military does not present a serious threat to NATO, has warned that Russia s armed forces are down but not out (Odom 1996). (Don t tell that story to the crew of the Kursk.) Former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman and Harvey Sicherman, writing in February 2001 and drawing on their forthcoming book America the Vulnerable, fretted about the erosion of U.S. military capacities and urged various manuevers to steer clear of the Pearl Harbor cycle whereby only a disaster brings effective action (Lehman and Sicherman 2001). The title of one recently published alarm speaks for itself: While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today, by Donald Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan (2001). Conservat
